Rick Hiebert, a Canadian reporter known for his past coverage of Todd Bentley reveals the Canadian charlatan who made a huge economic splash in Lakeland Florida is being groomed for a return to GodTV (?) and fleecing the flock again.

He also reveals Shonnah Bentley is disabled, having suffered bone cancer at 16. Doctors removed her left knee when she was a teen.

Is Bentley done? Hardly. Plans are already afoot to bring him back to full-time itinerant evangelism as early as late this year. And Mr. Bentley, who announced on leaving the revival that he has separated from his wife Shonnah, after reports in the press of two “emotional affairs” with other women may be divorced by the time he ministers again.

I can also reveal one of the reasons, virtually kept secret by the evangelist, that may be tempting Mr. Bentley to consider a divorce.

It seems that, contrary to the impression that the faith healing preacher has given for the past ten years that he has been married to Shonnah Bentley, she has been crippled by a lingering disability caused by bone cancer….

Mr. Bentley, as I found to my dismay when writing about him, has a way of wording things when talking about his past and ministry that leads people to believe things that are not strictly true. I found that I could only get him to be entirely truthful in some matters when I knew what the answers to his questions *should* be before I put the questions to him.

It would be naturally embarrassing to a faith healer that his wife has a life-long disability. Alas, Mr. Bentley has artfully avoided an embarrassing series of questions from the press, such as “Has your wife Shonnah had any lasting health problems due to her cancer? She has? Have you tried praying for her? How do you explain that your wife continues to have this health issue when your revival allegedly raises people from the dead…?”

This begs a question - if Shonnah Bentley suffers from the effects of bone cancer and Todd Bentley thinks it’s perfectly okay to knee a cancer patient in the stomach, does he have a theology of contempt for the ill, for his wife?  She told a Fresh Fire employee during the hyper-attention of Lakeland  the cancer had also spread to her lung when she was younger.
 That Bentley’s immaturity was seen round the world courtesy of GodTV and YouTube is not in question. Several of C. Peter Wagner’s ‘apostles’ wives are ill, as is Bob Jones, one of Bentley’s mentors.
Illness is an affront in neo-pentecostal/charismatic theology.

Todd Bentley’s wife Shonnah’s lasting disability is an opportunity for Mr. Bentley to learn and mature in his faith, one that he would throw away by divorcing her. There are many people who would like to be healed by God, but whom are not. Many Christian theologians and ministers have explored the issue of how God can and does work in and through a sick person’s life and witness even if they are not instantly healed at a revival crusade. As someone who likes to specialize in this particular form of faith healing evangelism, Mr. Bentley really owes it to the rest of his audience to flesh out his theology.

prior posts ( I agree with Hiebert - Fresh Fire et al will probably do all they can to yank the YouTube videos again)

PS: Is media able to follow the money trail? Between the Strader family (Karl, Dan and Steven - Google them) GodTV moving it’s headquarters from Oklahoma to Washington and recently to Florida, Fresh Fire Ministries buying property in Florida and both GodTV and Fresh Fire registering as US charities, where did the Lakeland money go, and where is it going in the future?